Moira Brown: Autobiography
by Chris I. Deck
Summary: People say I'm from Canterbury Commons. Although I did spend some time there, it is not where I am from. I came from a town called Chestnut Flats...but I shouldn't give away too much. You'll have to read on to learn more.
1. Chapter 1

I am known in the D.C. wasteland as the founder and owner of Craterside Supply and the author of the Wasteland Survival Guide. There is much more to me than that, though. It was a heck of a journey just to get the D.C. I couldn't possibly have made it alone; luckily I didn't need to. It's funny how people say that I am from Canterbury Commons. Although I did spend some time there, I was not born or raised anywhere near there.

I should start when I was growing up. I grew up 161 kilometers south of the capitol in a place called Chestnut Flats. It was a settlement that was larger than most that I've seen in the capitol. I believe there were about fifty to sixty people living there. We were fairly safe from raiders, as our town sat between two cliff walls and our guards were well armed and trained.

My best friend since childhood was Flick. He and I would explore and many times get into trouble together. Although there wasn't romance, we were still inseparable. I remember when we were seven and we learned how to pick the lock on doors. We felt so clever until we were caught breaking into old man Hatchet's house by my dad. My dad marched me home and wore me out over his knee. After that, we were much more careful.

Flick was a clever guy who was able to repair an assault rifle's gas system by the age of eleven. I remember how he would always dress. He had sewn secret pouches in his gray pants where he hid lock picking tools. His green jacket, he put places for tools and a place inside his left sleeve where he put his switchblade. He and I didn't like wearing shoes and avoided it whenever possible. We loved to climb on top of some of the shacks and talk about traveling up north where we had heard many stories from adventurers who had gone there and met the Brotherhood of Steel who were like legend in Chestnut Flats. I dreamed of traveling north and making a name for myself.

By the time Flick and I were seventeen, we had made a business of repairing people's gear. I dare say that we were really darn good at it. We used some of the caps we made on new weapons and tools for their parts. We were each making about forty caps per day which for us at the time was great. We soon expanded into selling supplies we scavenged or traded for. We called our shop Cliffside Supply. As you can tell, I slightly modified the name for my later business in Megaton.

When Flick and I were eighteen, we had saved up enough caps that we decided we were going to finally travel north and reach our dreams. We set out in 2271 with a pack Brahmin, all our savings, and as much gear as we could bring.

Our first big challenge met us not even a week after we set off. We heard voices coming from not too far away from where we were spending the night. There were four or five raiders wandering right towards us. They didn't see us, luckily, but they would be right on top of us if we didn't move. Flick said if we move, then they are sure to see or hear us. We had no choice but to take them out before they started shooting.

We each grabbed a fragmentation mine (we didn't have any grenades on us) and armed the detonator. We waited until they were maybe seven meters away and threw them. We both ducked and covered our heads. The combined blast blew the raiders to pieces. We covered our noses when we walked over to where they were. They didn't have world class gear, but we pulled a combat knife and some jet off them and continued on our way.

Our first encounter with another caravan on our journey was a few days later. We managed to trade the combat knife, jet, and metal armor we had for some scrap metal and a silenced 10mm pistol. We only had about thirty bullets for the pistol, but it certainly was nice to have. We asked where he came from and we were delighted to hear that he was actually from the capitol wasteland. He told us of a place called Canterbury Commons where a caravan like ours would be welcome.

Now we had something to go on. We needed to find this Canterbury Commons, so we can get our dream going. It would be a while, though, before we met another person that was as friendly as the caravan peddler that we met.


	2. Chapter 2

I quickly learned that the stories of travelers and adventurers crossing the wasteland didn't accurately describe all the struggles of life out in the wastes. Sure, they loved to talk about the raiders and mutant creatures that they met along the way, but there was much more to fear. The wasteland is mostly dead, so finding food is a real problem at times. More than once Flick and I found ourselves eating bloat fly meat, resisting the urge to eat the Brahmin.

Most of the water sources that we found had high readings on our Geiger counter, possibly reaching 14 rps. Every now and then we would run out of options and fill our canteens with the irradiated water and mix in a bit of rad-away. It made the water have a strange, metallic taste, but it was certainly better than radiation sickness or dehydration.

The nuclear war that happened 194 years before had greatly altered Earth's climate. The whole world was now a dry, dead desert. Our calendar said it was February, but yet the temperature at midday still reached thirty degrees Celsius. The ground was dry and dusty and as we walked across the seemingly endless desert our feet kicked up clouds of powdered dirt. Deserts are known to be burning hot during the day, but at night, temperatures drop sometimes to five degrees Celsius. Desert ground doesn't hold heat for long, that's why there is such a temperature difference.

We traveled mostly during the dawn and dusk hours, when it wasn't too hot, but there was still a decent amount of light. We'd take turns sleeping at night and would find somewhere shady if we could for the hottest part of the day. I had been taught years ago that when out in the desert, drink as much water as you need. Your body doesn't care about conserving when you're dehydrated. Many travelers have been found dead from dehydration still with water with them because they were trying to conserve.

We had been traveling for maybe two weeks by the time we had found another human dwelling. We had been trying to find a way past the mountains for most of that time. If we were able to travel a perfect straight line, we could have made the journey in a little more than a week, but we weren't equipped for climbing mountains. As we came closer to the couple of shacks, we saw something that made our hearts beat in our throats. It was the first time I had seen a deathclaw in person. I had heard stories about how with their speed and seven to eight inch claws that can slice steel, they were nearly unstoppable. We didn't try any heroics and started to move around the beast.

Unfortunately, the thing saw us and ran at us with surprising speed. Running wasn't an option, so we did the only thing we could and opened fire. We fired an assault rifle and the silenced 10mm pistol, but the deathclaw kept coming. When it was only six meters away there was a sudden burst of blood from its head and the monster fell with a loud thump. We saw that the shot came from somewhere behind it, so it couldn't have been us. We were hoping to see the person who saved our skins there, but we couldn't see anyone. We looked around as hard as we could, but as far as we could prove, one of us must have gotten a lucky shot. We saw that there was a Yao Guai fighting a second deathclaw. We didn't stick around long enough to see who won. Unless we were very much mistaken, we thought we heard another gunshot like crack from the location of the shacks.

We did finally find a path through the mountains. It was a fairly large gorge that led through the towering rock on either side. We waited until the next day to begin through the pass, as daylight was already fading. It was hard to sleep that night. We were getting ever closer to the capitol wasteland, where we had been dreaming of ever since we first heard of it years before.

The morning didn't come fast enough. We saw the first rays of hope we'd encountered our entire journey. We had walked at least two kilometers before we had reached the other side of the valley and saw what lied beyond. We ran across another non raider human, the first in days. We asked her if she knew where Canterbury Commons is and were delighted to hear that she did.

"Oh, yea, I know where it is," She said. "I've traded there before. You should be able to get there by nightfall. Just head south east, about 130o."

She then asked what we had to trade. After much bargaining, we had traded a carton of cigarettes and some 32 caliber rounds for some crispy squirrel bits and a couple Nuka Colas. As soon as we had finished eating, we were right back on the move.

Perhaps it was because we were distracted by the excitement of being so close, but we didn't notice the pack of raiders until a bullet landed half a meter in front of me. I led the pack Brahmin behind some very large boulders and stepped around the rocks and fired the silenced 10mm pistol.

Flick was already shooting the assault rifle and I saw one of them take a bullet to the chest and drop like a sack of sand. There were still three more and we had to hide behind some small rocks to avoid their returning fire. A whooshing sound and the air feeling like an oven told me that one of the raiders had a flamer. If they had this kind of firepower, we weren't going to last long.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I'd say nearly being burned, shot, and stabbed counted as a serious emergency. I grabbed our last fragmentation mine and armed it. I took a deep breath and lobbed it over the rock. The explosion that followed shook the ground beneath me and left me with a slight ringing in my ears. When I looked over the rock, I nearly threw up. There was the smell of burning flesh and flamer smoke thick in the air. I tied my bandana around my neck and looked for anything that I could scavenge among the bodies. There was an assault rifle, but I saw that the receiver was busted. I kept it; the internals were probably still useable. We found on the raiders two fragmentation grenades, a switchblade, and three bottles of scotch.

By the time we could see Canterbury Commons, it was already dusk. We forced ourselves to keep going, we had come this far, we sure weren't giving up now. We were stopped by a guard by the name of Cinderblock. He saw that we were a caravan and not raiders and let us enter. When we were in and settled down, we were giddy from our success. Now it was time for us to take our caravan and repair business to the next level.


End file.
